


Follow You Down, Down, Down

by onstraysod



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: F/M, Gothic!AU, moors and moonlight and masquerades
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-21
Updated: 2016-07-22
Packaged: 2018-07-25 22:47:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7550227
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onstraysod/pseuds/onstraysod
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jyn Erso is a beautiful, resourceful, but impoverished lady. Orson Krennic is the rich, mysterious, and villainous master of the manor. A collection of short Gothic!AU pieces from Tumblr.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Now Droops the Milkwhite Peacock Like a Ghost

**Author's Note:**

> Main title taken from the official unofficial Jynnic theme song, Lana Del Rey's "Million Dollar Man."
> 
> Chapter titles taken from Alfred, Lord Tennyson's "Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal."

What a wild little bird she was, with brown feathers around her large hazel eyes and the gown like silken wings clinging to her slender curves. His mouth watered as he pursued her through the pairs of masked dancers turning in slow swathes of satin and velvet, into the garden beneath the manifold stars. Topiary knights astride green chargers, holding wire lances twined with clinging ivy, loomed over that slight figure as it slipped into the hedge maze. A flutter of sapphire blue skirt, a tantalizing glimpse of white petticoat beneath, turning the first corner, disappearing into darkness. And he smiled, pausing at the threshold to smooth the drape of his cloak, adjust the black gloves on his hands. He breathed deeply, filling his lungs with night air, with the perfume of wild roses, the wool of his tunic pulling tighter across the breadth of his chest, excitement speeding the pulse of his cold blood. He had time, plenty of it. There was but one entrance to the maze, and one exit, and they were both the same. They ran past him, through him: he controlled the maze as he controlled so much else, every turn, every false start, a blueprint in his mind, on his skin. She could not escape him. The little bird had flown straight into his trap.

He was a ghost in those dark passages, a glimmer of winter moonlight on a black stream. He moved with measured strides, boots silent on the damp grass, senses acute to every whisper of sound. It had been a long time since he had snared a wild thing, chased a fleet-footed doe into this blind. Would she strike out against him, kicking with hooves, leaping recklessly to elude his grasp? Or would she submit to the inevitable, lay herself down and expose her tender white flanks to his hungry mouth? His spine sizzled, his groin grew tight and hot. A star sliced through the sky, unmoored from its station.

At the center of the maze, a small square, a room with leafy walls and airy ceiling. In the middle of the space a fountain, water trickling in gentle rivulets from a large orb of grey stone. She stood on the opposite side, fists clenched in frustration, pacing like a penned animal, a lithe tigress in a cage. When she turned to seek the exit she saw him, still as a pillar, white as a phantom, and she hung immobile, wanting to run, forced to remain. She had removed her mask of bird feathers and the thought occurred to him: it didn’t suit her. A bird was far too fragile a creature: this beauty had sharp teeth.

***

“Will you dance?” asked the man in the demon mask. He stood in the moonlight like a vision half-remembered from a dream, an archetype made flesh. Sharp horns piecing the shadows, white cloak like a coffin shroud, curved predatory beak like a twisted vulture presiding over Pandemonium. But the cold, sensuous mouth beneath the partial mask was real, and it struck Jyn that whatever else he might be, this man was at least honest. Everyone at the masquerade was a demon in flimsy disguise. He made no pretense of being anything else.

She had not come there to dance, but to steal. Slipping around the edges of the ball in her pilfered gown and homemade mask, alert for every opportunity: a watch fob dangling, a handbag mislaid, a string of pearls around an inattentive neck. The cream of the Empire’s aristocracy were gathered there, rich pickings for her nimble fingers, and even beneath their bestial masks she recognized them: haughty Tarkin, Duke of Eriadu, cadaverous beneath the furred visage of a wolf; Lord Veers, handsome and ruthless, with the disguise of a hawk; Piett, squire of rich lands, powerful but aloof, a solitary lion prowling in one corner. They drank champagne and made conversation, but Jyn could see the cunning in their glances, the invisible daggers raised behind backs, primed to strike home. One predator recognizing the methods of others, hunting them as they hunted their own.

She was not there to socialize, but to survive: a crow in a nest of vipers, come to steal their eggs. Every bauble was a meal, every trinket another week free from her father’s creditors. Between a roof over her head and a night out in the rain there was but a thin line of danger, a wall over which Jyn was daring enough to scramble, small and inconsequential enough to skirt along in its shadow, unobserved.

Or so it had always been before. But that night--

His attention had been drawn, somehow. The demon in white, black-gloved, tight-lipped, with piercing eyes in the midst of his dark mask, glints of frigid blue chilling all they surveyed. She felt those eyes before she saw them, cutting into her skin, and even across the ballroom she sensed the thoughts behind them: calculating, lurid, cruel. Between the slowly turning couples she would catch sight of the demon and she was ravished from a distance, body and mind laid bare.

Now he had her hemmed in, thorny hedge behind her, horned devil before. Cold white stars and cold white moon, cold white cloak and cold smile. “Will you dance?” he asked, but of course that wasn’t what he wanted: not to move to the rhythm of the music spilling from the open French doors, not to place their feet in intricate patterns. But to hold her body hard against his, to control her, to soak up the heat of a warm-blooded creature, feed his frigid bones.

No, she would not be tamed by this demon. He would try to chain her, twist her; possess and lock her away in a circular prison of stone. Hold her beneath his black-gloved thumb and command her every action, tell her when and when not to breathe. 

But the challenge of resistance, the friction of battling wills. The thought of wrestling with the demon made Jyn feel alive. Danger always did; balancing on the edge of death always, _always_ did. She was perverse that way.

He did not take her hand when she approached him, did not draw her into a dance. He had never intended to. Instead he put a leather-soft finger to her pouted lips, a benediction or a demand.

And she bit.


	2. And Like a Ghost She Glimmers On to Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She ran, barefooted, across the moor.

She ran, barefooted, across the moor. Full moon above, cruel rocks below, shredding the soles of her feet, spilling her blood into the soil. Jyn ran, nightdress pale as a burial shroud billowing around her, a shred of mist dashing through the darkness. There were monsters out here: she had heard them before, keening and howling in the pit of the night, but it did not matter. Better the monsters she didn’t know than the Devil she did.

The lord of the manor: he of the cruel mouth and the pale glittering eyes. He’d made an offer of marriage, and what choice did she have but to accept it? Galen had chased the bottle into an early grave, the rent was unpaid, and penury dangled above Jyn’s head like a sword. Besides, she had a plan. She too had heard the rumors: of chests that could barely be closed upon the gold heaped inside them; of exotic gems bigger than a child’s fist. All hidden away in the labyrinth of rooms inside the old manor, under his lock and his key and his keen, piercing glance. She would find them, fill her bags and flee: for though money could not buy love it could certainly purchase freedom. And all the Emperor’s horsemen, and all the Emperor’s men, would not raise their hands against a runaway bride with gold to bribe: a coin slipped into a hand would buy many an averted gaze.

So she’d become mistress of that great house on the hill: mistress of the cold, echoing corridors; of the tomb-like stone walls hung with fading tapestries; of the shadows and the candlelight and the groaning complaints of ancient wooden beams. In those first weeks she’d lain like a dead thing in that bed hung with draperies, heaped with velvet: stiff and inert, awaiting with dread the inevitable touch, the slide of a hand over her hip, her stomach. The hand would come to rest on a clothed breast, cupping it gently, and a thumb would stroke in small circles until she hardened beneath his touch. Then, feeling this, he’d give a quiet groan of anticipation and roll over atop her, rucking the hem of her nightdress up around her waist, parting her thighs with his knee. His hot mouth on her throat, on her breast, his hardness breaching, she’d close her eyes tight and think of treasure, and bite down on her bottom lip until it bled: biting down on a pain that never came, biting down on moans that did.

And when he slept the deep sleep of the sated, Jyn would ease out of the bed and take up a candle and begin her search. Through drafty halls she padded, dodging errant shadows and the sense of being pursued, trying to ignore the sticky wetness between her thighs as she ticked off each square in her mental grid: corridor by corridor, turning doorknob after icy doorknob, peering into cabinet after bureau after chest. And long before the half-light of dawn crept pale fingers between the curtains, she would return to the bedchamber, extinguish the candle flame, lay against his warmth and swear that the next night she’d find his secret.

The next night. The next night. The next--

The lady of the manor: she of the sharp dark eye and teasing smile. Sometimes during the day she would stand at a window in her finery and watch him stride across the grounds below, his black riding boots splattered with mud, his silver-frosted hair mirroring the clouded sky, the tail of his black frock coat whipped by the wind. He would have his hunting dogs with him - great, long-legged brutes - and she would remind herself that she hated him, curling her fingers into fists at her sides, biting nails into flesh. Hated his wealth, hated his power, hated the haughty turn of his mouth, the dismissive arch of an eyebrow. Hated his cold eyes and his hot lust. Hated his ancient house.

Hated her own self.

But then the night came when she was the first to touch. When it was her hand that slid, over his chest, down between his thighs. Her body turning and pressing against his, her mouth hot against his collarbone, his throat. She sat upon him and took him inside of her, sinking deep, but it wasn’t enough: she wanted his touch all over her, and so she raised the nightdress over her head and threw it to the floor, took his hands and brought them to her breasts, felt the cascade of dark curls tumbling down her naked spine as she moved upon him and he looked up at her, eyes piercing in the darkness, with an expression like he’d seen the face of God.

The next night she touched him again. And the next night. And the next–-

And Jyn began to anticipate it, the first touch: his or hers, hip or thigh, gentle or possessive. The press of lips, the swipe of tongue, the burning, searing need. Lightning in the darkness and exclamations of pleasure, shattering the silence of the night.

She began to forget about her nocturnal treasure hunt. At least the one for gold.

That’s why she runs barefooted across the moor. To escape that which she never thought would pursue her, this thing with hot panting breath and sharp rending teeth: her weakness. Her desire.


	3. Now Lies the Earth All Danaë to the Stars

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He is marble: smooth, white, pristine. Distant as the moon, cold as death to the touch.

He is hard, unbreakable. It is the only way to be.

There is a weak spot in every man, if only you know how to find it. Like a sheet of glass there is that point of vulnerability: strike it with something sharp and it will shatter, a thousand sharp diamonds radiating outward. There will be a tiny flaw in the design, a minuscule fissure, overlooked by the untrained eye. But he has the vision of a raptor - precise, unblinking. Find the defect, apply the right pressure. He has destroyed many a rival in this way.

Enemies, in turn, have tried the same tactic against him. They waste their cunning and their time, hurling themselves against a sea wall that will not be breached. For Krennic has always known that he could have no weak points, and so he has shaped his life accordingly. In the edifice that is his ambition there are no joins, no yielding mortar between the bricks. He has carved himself from solid stone, and any hand raised to strike him will break itself in the attempt.

He is marble: smooth, white, pristine. Distant as the moon, cold as death to the touch.

Or so he supposed.

The master is like the house - or is the house like its master? If you manage to get through the gate (unlikely), you must then find your way through the labyrinth: a maze of green right-angles, dead ends and double-backs. Beyond the maze the walls rise like sheer cliffs, and the strongest winds moan about the battlements, too weak to force their way. It is the design of an engineer of malice, the work of a metal-ribbed mind, and it is part of him, as he is part of it. The stone walls are studded inside with the implements of war: swords and pole-axes, spikes and barbed shields, heavy-headed hammers for bashing in men’s skulls. Vast legions could be outfitted by the armament that decorates his house. There is nothing soft, nothing yielding. The manor - the master - is all iron and gears and merciless plans for laying waste to worlds.

Yet there is one room - and his enemies will never see it. That one chamber at the heart of the house, the sanctum deep beyond the twisting staircases, the sepulcher-cold corridors. The room he had draped in silks and velvets, in shades of red like wine and pomegranate seeds and wet, kiss-swollen lips. The room he had laid with plush Turkish carpet, perfumed with censers of spice. The room with the casks he had filled with ropes of diamonds, freshwater pearls, bracelets set with emeralds and moonstones from far Cathay.

It is a chamber of glances risked from beneath half-lowered eyelids; of fingers playing over long stretches of taut flesh. It is a chamber of whispered confessions and bitten off moans, of barriers broken down and inhibitions cast aside. He has been on his knees in that chamber, has begged in that chamber, sworn oaths and shed tears and surrendered in that chamber. It is a room that holds his treasure, his weakness, his strangled pleas for mercy and his prayers that mercy never come.

Her room.

He is hard, unbreakable. But he stands in that room, alone, gripping the bedpost with one leather-clad fist. In the other hand: a piece of paper, a scribble of ink. His bird of paradise has flown its cage; his wild rebel slipped away, over the moor beneath the pale new moon. Krennic needs no enemy to come upon him then, to strike with blade or blast at the weak spot, the fissure that runs suddenly plain and gaping across his world. He is already shattering, dissolving.

The moment he first beheld her - doe-eyes and pouted lips - he realizes it now. That was when the crack started. She was the vulnerability in his superstructure. The flaw in his design.

_Catch me_ , the note says.

He can see her in his mind’s eye, running: white satin gathered up over slender legs, dark hair like a pennant in the wind. She is laughing at him, but she is beckoning too, hooked fingers drawing him in pursuit, mouth open on a promise of reward. Heat coils in his groin and he grips the bedpost harder, paralyzed with need. He is wounded, weakened: a wall punctured by cannon fire, glass marred by a scratch. But he still has strength for this.

He leaves the room, tossing the note upon the bed.

_Catch me_.

And he will. But who now is the hunter, he wonders. And who is the prey?


	4. And All Thy Heart Lies Open Unto Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _I don't remember you._

“I don’t remember you.”

“Do you not?”

She shakes her head and watches her fingers toy with the gauzy drapery. The curtains are white, slightly transparent, and they give her hands a soft indistinctness when she passes them behind the fabric. She wonders what the rest of her body looks like, from the other side: all her sharp points and sleek planes softened, a pale pink ghost in the candlelight.

“The man who brought me to this cold house, this barren hill,” she muses, “he was cruel. Hard as iron, all sharp teeth and sharper tongue.”

Movement behind the draperies: slow, deliberate. “He sounds like a monster.”

“Oh he was. A terrible monster. Bloodthirsty. Ravenous.” She closes her eyes for a moment, tilts her head back to let her dark hair float out over the pillow, ribbons of chestnut, shadow and sheen. “I often wonder how many poor souls he’s devoured. Travelers lost in the snowy woods, never returning to their homes and kin. Shredded by claw and tooth.”

He is nothing but a blur behind the curtains, form and color and shape. “Were you afraid of him?”

She laughs, a sound like glass baubles tumbling across stone, and she catches her bottom lip with the tip of her tongue. “I’ve never been afraid of anyone.” Then she pauses, breathes. “But him? Yes. Yes, I was afraid of him.”

He stops. He is halfway around the bed now, clockwise, coming to the side where she lays. His hand brushes the draping fabric, black on frosted white: he is still wearing his riding gloves. A shiver skips down her spine, ripples over her skin.

“What did you fear?”

She arches a little, slides one leg up until her knee is sharply bent. She wonders what he can see, if anything: just smudged colors, expanses of light and hollows of darkness, small secret places. Her eyes focus on her pale kneecap: she walks her fingers up and over the crest, pirouettes. Anticipation has her taut as a violin string.

“I feared how he made me feel.”

“And how was that?” He is moving again, but slowly: his patience infinite.

“Like I was turning feral. Like I wanted to run wild. To bite, to rend. To tear at flesh and eat it raw. Like I was nothing more than need and impulse. And the need and the impulse were no longer under my control.”

He stands at her side now, though still separated by the veil of drapery. She smiles and stretches, arms above her head, displaying her hills and valleys like the land unfolding beneath a mist. “But he’s gone now. And you’re here. You cannot be him. Though I don’t remember you: when you came, where you came from.”

He draws the curtains back and comes into focus: flint-sharp eyes and a boyish smile. He is all such contrasts: black and white, bone and flesh, logic and instinct. “I came into being the first time you touched me,” he says. He traces her jaw, pushes the tip of one leather-clad finger between her lips, and she nips and suckles, holding his gaze. One little act of dominance, and then he’s worshiping her: sliding stubbled cheek over bare breasts, reverent kisses over stomach and hips.

“The first time you dug your fingers into my hair,” he murmurs, and she does so. “The first time you moaned my name.” _Orson_ , she whimpers on an exhaled breath. “The first time I felt you tighten around me and shiver like you’d break apart and there was nothing in my head except exploding stars. Then I lived. I lived.”

Skin on skin, they create one another anew.

Even monsters have their tender moments.


End file.
